by Troy Soos
We spoke little on Paulina Street, less on Lawrence, and we walked Hermitage and Sunnyside in total silence. When we returned to the house, I suggested we stay outside—for the fresh air, I thought to myself.
Edna and I sat on the steps to the front porch. The dachshunds frolicked around us unaware of the treat that was awaiting them inside. Otherwise, they would have dragged us through the front door.
I held a bent forefinger to Rube. He gnawed on the knuckle with gentle bites, his tail flicking the air.
“I went to that church,” I said. I waited for Edna to prod me with a question but wasn’t rewarded with any word or gesture. “Willie did go there that night,” I went on. “Don’t think there was much to it though.”
Edna nodded and remained silent. She was controlled and tight, even in appearance. Her hair was raked back from her face, kept in place by amber combs. It made her skin seem taut and her cheekbones higher.
I straightened my finger and Rube’s teeth grabbed hold of the tip. We started to play tug-of-war, with my finger as the rope. He emitted a determined, high-pitched sound that was closer to a whine than a growl.
I went on to what I really wanted to ask her. “I brought Willie’s things from his locker. They’re in the bag.” Fishing in my jacket pocket with my free hand, I drew out the green paper I’d found. “This was with his stuff, too. I kept it out so your mother wouldn’t see.” Unfolding the paper with one hand, I held it out so that Edna could read it. She scanned it without comment.
“Did you know he was working there?”
Edna nodded.
“Did your mother know?”
She shook her head.
“Speak,” I said with diminishing patience. I hadn’t meant to sound harsh. In a kinder tone, I tried to persuade her, “Please. I’m trying to find out what happened to Willie. If you know anything that can help, please tell me.”
Edna hesitated. A sheen of water coated her narrowed eyes, and I could see her fighting back tears. She won. “Willie told me,” she said calmly. “He wanted to do something for the war effort. So he worked in the plant at night.”
He’d told her but not me, his teammate. “He told you?” I repeated, not quite believing he’d confide something in her that he wouldn’t tell me.
“It was a secret,” she explained. “You have to share a secret with somebody, can’t keep it to yourself.”
“Your mother still doesn’t know?”
She shook her head, then promptly added, “No. A secret’s a secret.”
“Do you know any other secrets about Willie?”
“If I told you, they wouldn’t be secret anymore.”
I was exasperated to the point where I knew I’d better drop it for now.
Edna stood up. “I better go inside in case Mama calls. She hasn’t been well lately.”
“Anything serious?”
She gave me a look that could have come from Charles Weeghman. Stupid question, it said. “Yes,” said Edna. “Somebody killed her boy.”
I followed her into the house. While Edna took my satchel to Willie’s room, I took the dogs to theirs.
I gave the dogs their bones but found little satisfaction in their gratitude. They were too easy. They didn’t need support. They’d have licked the hand of anyone who gave them a pat or a bit of food. That’s one of the joys of dogs, I suppose: they’re reliable in their affection. But not particularly challenging.
I went to Willie’s room. Edna was laying Willie’s clothes out on his bed, smoothing the folds with her hand. “Mama wants you to have his books,” she said. “You can take them now if you want.”
“Oh. Well, thank you.” I didn’t like the idea of getting something because somebody had died. It was too much like Wicket Greene getting his job. “Are you sure you don’t want to keep them?”
A negative shake of her head.
“I have to go to the park from here. But I could take some of them with me.”
“Okay,” she said, still concentrating on the clothes.
I grabbed four volumes of the Mark Twain books to put in my satchel. Then I put three of them back. “How about if I take one each time I’m here?”
“If you like.”
“I was thinking.... How about we go to the movies Saturday? I think Tarzan is still playing.”
Edna bit her lip and nodded.
It was a windy day in Cubs Park last year, I remembered, the end of August, when Fred Mitchell had brought a skinny kid to me after a game with the Dodgers. “This boy thinks he’s a shortstop,” the manager said. “Find out if he is. Name’s Willie Kaiser. Oh, and we’re taking him on the road with us next week. You’re gonna be his roomie. Take care of ’im.”
The Willie Kaiser of 1918 was a different fellow from the eager rookie I’d first met in the summer of ’17. He’d become a better player with time, but less fun, more secretive, more burdened.
When Willie had first joined the Cubs, he’d been eager to see the world, his definition of the world being any city east of Pittsburgh. On our first train ride to New York, Willie had climbed into the upper berth of the Pullman sleeper, leaving me the coveted lower berth. Willie’s arrival in the big leagues coincided with my becoming established as a veteran.
In the city, I kept him under my wing, away from saloons and brothels. Nothing stronger than beer to drink, and no female temptations other than the burlesque houses of Union Square and the dance halls of Coney Island. The kid threw himself into these pleasures with the same passion he had for baseball. He grew so fond of the girlie shows that I often let him go alone while I went to the movies, my own preferred form of entertainment.
The signs of change started to appear in him last fall, as war fever gripped the country; but they were slight, manifested mostly in brief periods of brooding. Then, when the season was over, Willie went back to his job in the Union Stockyards and I went to play winter ball in California.
By the time Willie and the rest of the Cubs came to Los Angeles for spring training in February, the change in him was visible and complete. I couldn’t drag him to a burlesque show, and I could hardly drag a word out of him.
The problem I faced now was that there were two Willie Kaisers: the enthusiastic kid of 1917 and the new somber model of 1918. Actually, there were more than two. There were two this year alone: the one who played baseball and the one who worked nights in a munitions plant. I barely knew the one who played ball this year and didn’t know the secret life of Willie Kaiser at all.
He’d been keeping secrets from me, and I was only starting to discover what some of them were. Mostly what I was discovering were questions: Why did he go to Fohl’s church? What, if anything, did he know about what the Patriotic Knights of Liberty were planning? What was going on at Harrington’s plant? And why would a war make him lose interest in burlesque shows?
I decided the only way I could figure out what was going on with him was for me to be Willie Kaiser for a while. The secret Willie.
Wednesday morning, the earliest that I could get an appointment, I was in Bennett Harrington’s third-floor corner office on State Street. The furnishings of the airy, sun-washed room were modest and spare, with white wicker chairs and several healthy green potted plants situated about the parquet floor. The office had the feel of a verandah; all that was missing was a porch swing.
Harrington sat in a high-backed chair behind a gleaming, uncluttered white desk. A black candlestick telephone, a brass tray with two glasses, and a pitcher of water were the desk’s only accessories. Through the windows behind him, I could see the Masonic Temple across the street and Marshall Field’s on the corner of Randolph, confirming that I was still in Chicago, not Mississippi. The cross-breeze that blew through the open windows provided further evidence—a plantation would smell more like magnolias and less like the Chicago River.
“Thanks for seeing me, Mr. Harrington,” I began. I was seated in one of two small chairs placed a good ten feet from his desk. It made him seem more imposin
g to have to view him from a distance. And with the empty chair next to me, it felt like he had me outnumbered.
Harrington nodded as though fully aware of his generosity in granting me some of his valuable time. Dressed in his white linen suit, he looked like he belonged on a verandah, too, sipping a mint julep. All he needed was a white goatee and a matching mane of hair to make the image complete. With his Panama hat off, I could see his hair was dark and trim, though graying at the temples, and he was clean shaven. He had a gentle face and a sleepy left eye that appeared to be perpetually in mid-wink. I narrowed my estimate of his age to late forties, early fifties.
“The reason I came,” I went on, “was to ask about Willie Kaiser. I just found out that he worked for you.”
“Did he?” The question was noncommittal.
I plucked Willie’s identification paper from my jacket pocket, stepped up to the desk, and handed Harrington the evidence of Willie’s employment with the Dearborn Fuel Company.
He gave the paper a cursory glance. “So he did.” His thin lips showed a hint of a smile.
I sat back down. “Why was it a secret?”
Harrington paused to take a sip from his water glass. “Well, I suppose there’s no reason not to tell you,” he drawled softly. “Young Kaiser preferred it that way.” The winking left eye made it seem he was sharing a confidence. He leaned back in his chair. “See, I’ve given jobs to quite a few ballplayers. That way they can contribute to the war effort and still play baseball. I let them work whatever hours will fit in with the baseball schedule.” He smiled fully. “Truth is, I love baseball—”
Please, I hoped, don’t say “this great game of ours.”
“—and I don’t want to see the War Department shut it down. If we can show that baseball players can do both, play ball and help win the war, maybe we can keep everybody happy.”
Meanwhile, I thought ungraciously, you make money from both. “If that’s the purpose,” I said, “don’t people have to know about it? Nobody knew about Willie working in the plant.”
Harrington nodded. “That was his choice entirely. I respect him for that. Respect-ed, I suppose. Most of the players are eager to publicize the fact that they’re working in the plants. Not young Kaiser. He didn’t want any credit for it. Just wanted to do his bit to help.”
And keep his mother from finding out.
Harrington added, “Some of the players are taking a beating in the press for not fighting or doing war work.”
“Joe Jackson’s taking a beating and he is working. Comiskey says he won’t let him back on the Sox if he doesn’t enlist.”
Harrington chuckled. “That’s just The Old Roman’s way of negotiating. He’ll take Jackson back but at half the money he was paying him before. You’ll see.” Harrington suddenly caught himself. The art of negotiating isn’t something for an owner to reveal to a ballplayer. He changed the subject completely. “The Giants are coming in tomorrow, aren’t they?”
I nodded.
“John McGraw...” A relaxed smile developed on Harrington’s face. “You played for him before you came to the Cubs didn’t you?”
“Yup. Three years.”
“That must have been great.”
“Sure was,” I agreed, though it often hadn’t seemed so great at the time. McGraw was not an easy manager to play for. I’d heard, and didn’t doubt, that he breakfasted on warm blood and gunpowder, then cleaned his teeth with barbed wire.
“I used to love the old Baltimore Orioles,” Harrington said wistfully. “McGraw at third base, Hughie Jennings at short, Wilbert Robinson behind the plate...”
“Joe Kelley and Wee Willie Keeler in the outfield,” I joined in.
Harrington lit up. “Did you see them play?”
“Not at their best.” I wished I had. Ned Hanlon’s Baltimore Orioles of the mid-1890s may have been the best baseball team ever.
“John McGraw, he was the best of the bunch,” Harrington said with admiration. “Smartest ballplayer there ever was.”
Smart was one word for John McGraw. Opponents and newspapers had other words for him—“hooligan” and “ruffian” were among the few the papers could print.
“The tricks he came up with,” Harrington went on. “He had one where he used to hold back a runner trying to tag from third on a fly ball. While the umpire’s looking at the outfielder to see if the ball is caught, McGraw would hook his finger under the runner’s belt. By the time the ump turns around and McGraw lets go of the belt, he’s cost the runner a couple of steps.”
Harrington was off in a baseball reverie now. “I was at the game the time he got caught pulling that trick. Big Ed Delahanty, playing for the Phillies, hit a triple with nobody out. Next batter—might have been Sam Thompson—hits a towering fly ball to left. Delahanty’s ready to tag up from third when John McGraw moves up behind him and loops his finger through the back of Delahanty’s belt. So what does Big Ed do? He unfastens the buckle. The ball drops into Joe Kelley’s glove, Delahanty takes off for home, and John McGraw’s left holding a dangling strip of leather—looked like a dead snake! Delahanty runs all the way home holding his pants up with one hand and scores!”
We both laughed. I’d heard the tale before, but never from someone who’d been there.
“McGraw told me another one where they got caught,” I offered.
Harrington nodded for me to go on.
“The Orioles used to have their groundskeeper keep the outfield grass real high so they could hide extra balls in it. The other team hits a ball that looks like it’s going through for extra bases, and hey, the Oriole outfielder just picks up one of the planted balls and throws it in.”
Harrington roared, “That’s a good one!”
“Here’s the best part—I think it happened against Louisville. Joe Kelley usually played left field for the Orioles, but this game he was playing center and Willie Keeler was in right. A Louisville batter hits a low line drive that goes right between Kelley and Keeler. Both of them ran in the general direction of the ball, both of ’em pretended to field it, and they each picked up a different ball stashed in the grass. So what happens? Two balls are thrown in to second base when only one was batted out. Umpire forfeited the game to Louisville.”
“That’s what you call getting caught red-handed!”
“Sure is. And you know why McGraw told me the story?”
“Why?”
“Not because he thought it was funny. He still didn’t forgive Keeler and Kelley for costing them the game!”
Harrington shook his head. “That’s McGraw all right. I remember the tall grass in the outfield. Right field was really tough. Know how Fenway has that hill in left?”
“Yeah, I played there.”
“Orioles Park went downhill as you went back. And it was just about always wet. There was a crick—Brady’s Run it was called—that ran behind the fence. Water would overflow into right field. Keeler played it well, but I saw more than one visiting player take a header in that swamp.”
“Are you from Baltimore?”
“Born and bred.”
Funny, from his clothes he looked like he was from Georgia or Mississippi or somewhere. I never really thought of Baltimore as southern.
We swapped a few more stories about the old Orioles. The cracker barrel baseball talk was nice, but I still wanted to know what Willie was doing at his plant. The next time he paused for a sip of water, I said, “Say, Mr. Harrington, do you think you can give me a job, too?”
His face turned businessman. “What can you do?”
A little bit of everything, after working for industrial leagues. But the only thing I was good at was baseball.
“Chemistry?” he asked.
I shook my head no.
Of course, Willie couldn’t have known much either, I thought.
“Plumbing?” he tried.
“I can do anything Willie could,” I said. “You must have an opening for his job. Can I have that?”
Harrington
smiled. “I have more than a thousand employees. I don’t know if Kaiser’s job has been filled yet. But if you want it, you’ve got it. I’ll check with the foreman.”
“Thanks Mr. Harrington. Oh, and I don’t want it publicized either.”
“Very well. Of course, it wouldn’t help as much with you as it would have with Kaiser anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“Kaiser. A ‘Kaiser’ working for the American war effort? It would have been great publicity. Not just for baseball. It would have shown that Americans of all backgrounds are united. We’re fighting the Germans ‘over there,’ not here. Anyway, how about starting Monday?”
“That would be great. We’re going on the road end of next week though.”
“No problem. Like I said, baseball comes first.”
I stood to go and offered my hand. “Thanks Mr. Harrington.”
Harrington took it without rising. “It’s a shame about Kaiser getting killed like that. That’s really going to hurt gate receipts.”
Hurt gate receipts. Just when I was starting to like the guy, he shows he really is an owner at heart.
Chapter Nine
Saturday afternoon, hours before the final game of a three-game series with the Giants and long before my teammates would be joining me, I strolled about the infield of Cubs Park. Always the first player on the field, I was earlier than usual today. My punishment was over. I was wearing white home flannels again and was eager to show them to the fans already sprinkled throughout the stands.
Contrary to Bennett Harrington’s prediction that attendance would be down, we’d had packed crowds for both of the previous meetings in the series. For a game against the Giants, the fans will always come out—no matter that a player was shot and killed in the park not ten days before. Part of the attraction was John McGraw; fans throughout the country delighted in taunting him, giving him the same verbal abuse that he dispensed so profusely.
The other draw was simply that the opposition was a team from New York. There were plenty of rivalries in baseball—Giants and Dodgers, Red Sox and Yankees, Cubs and Cardinals—but those were for local bragging rights, like being the toughest kid on the block. A series between Chicago and New York was a battle between different parts of the country, different cultures almost. The frontier spirit of the Midwest versus the big-city pugnacity of the Northeast.